St. Gilles, or St. Giles, was an Athenian of royal blood, who, fearing the admiration excited by his talents, went to France, and became a hermit in a cave near the mouth of the Rhone. { 107} He subsisted on the produce of the woods and the milk of a tame hind. After his death a magnificent monastery, and then a city, rose round his tomb, and gave his name to the counts of Languedoc.
In a large portable _châsse_ is the head of the glorious St. Thomas Aquinas, the author of the profound _Summa Theologiae_ and the sublime Office of the Blessed Sacrament, worthy of the tongues of angels. This great doctor of the middle ages is not dead. His voice is still heard in the office of the church, "now with a single antiphon unlocking whole abysses of Scripture, and now in almost supernatural melody, more like the echoes of heaven than mere poetry of earth," says Faber. One should listen to this grand office resounding in the arches of the church where its author is enshrined, when thousands of tapers, around the enthroned ostensorium, light up the brilliant shrine of St. Sernin! It is a foretaste of the song of the redeemed!
When the body of St. Thomas of Aquin, brought from Italy, approached Toulouse, Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of France, with archbishops and mitred abbots, at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand people, went out to meet it. Duke Louis and the principal lords of his court bore over it a canopy blazing with gold and precious stones. Around it floated six standards: on two were the arms of France, the third of Anjou, the others of the pope, the house of Aquin, and the city of Toulouse. They enshrined it magnificently in the church of the Dominicans, but it has been at St. Sernin since the Revolution. When placed in its present _châsse_ in 1852, the venerable Père Lacordaire made a panegyric of the saint, attracting an immense audience. The arms of the illustrious house of Aquin are emblazoned on his altar.
In passing out of the crypts on the side opposite that which I entered is the following inscription:
"After having reunited in Clermont, in the year of salvation 1096, the faithful destined to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, Pope Urban II. wished himself to consecrate this basilica, one of the most precious monuments of Christian art. The sovereign pontiff had near him Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse and of St. Gilles, that glorious prince who first displayed on his banners and on his armor the Holy Cross of the Saviour.
